I once traveled to Europe with a dealer who introduced me in Paris to the dealer for Utrillos. I was successful in having this dealer send six or seven Utrillos to his New York gallery, and tried to help him sell them. I telephoned a friend of mine and had him take one on consignment; he hung it as the main picture in his room, replacing another painting that he had hanging. But he didn't want to pay the gallery's asking price, so the dealer rook it back, and my friend put his old painting back up over his fireplace.

About a week later my friend telephoned me to say that he could not stand his old painting anymore and asked me to be the intermediary with the dealer on the price. I told him that financially he was well equipped to pay the price and the dealer had very little margin on it, so he was glad to purchase the Utrillo painting at the dealer's price.

On my first visit to Europe, just after World War II, a New York dealer brought me into a gallery in Paris that had several Utrillos. I liked one of them and bought it, and the dealer gave me a photograph marked 1917. Subsequently, when this same dealer wrote a book on the Oeuvres of Utrillo, he reproduced the painting, and dated it 1937. When he sold me the painting he had enlarged on the idea that it was an early Utrillo, as these were more in demand and more costly, so I can only believe that his earlier false date was intentional.